Stevenson vs. Karpency & Spence vs. Van Heerden tonight on Spike

By Boxing News - 09/11/2015 - Comments

spence53By Dan Ambrose: WBC 175lb champion Adonis Stevenson (26-1, 21 KOs) will be inside the ring tonight to defend his WBC title against American southpaw Tommy Karpency (25-4-1, 14 KOs) on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike from the Ricoh Coliseum, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Stevenson-Karpency card will start at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT. It’s on free television for Americans, so it’s a really good deal.

Karpency is going to need a knockout to get a victory tonight because he does not have the talent to match-up with Stevenson in a head to head battle. If Karpency is smart, he’ll be swinging for the fences from the first minute of the first round.

On the undercard unbeaten welterweight Errol Spence (17-0, 14 KOs) will be battling Chris van Heerden (23-1-1, 12 KOs) in an interesting 10 round contest. This is a showcase opportunity for the 25-year-old Spence to show off his talent to the boxing world.

A lot of fans will be watching the fight on Spike, and it’s Spence’s chance to make a case for himself that he’s ready to be fighting for a world title. He needs an impressive win over the 28-year-old Van Heerden to show the world that he’s ready to step forward and become a huge star in the sport.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe have built Spence up recently in going to bat for him to try and encourage WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman to fight him. Now it’s Spence’s chance to show them that they were right to believe in him.

Junior middleweight knockout artist Prichard “Digget” Colon (15-0, 12 KOs) takes on 37-year-old former WBA light welterweight champion Vivian Harris (32-10-2, 19 KOs) in an eight round fight. Harris has lost 7 out of his last 11 contests. Harris’ career has obviously gone downhill dramatically since 2007. He was still roughly in his prime in 2005 when he lost his WBC title to Carlos Maussa, but things have really gone badly for him ever since.

Colon, 22, has stopped his last two opponents Daniel Calzada and Michael Finney in 2015. It’s still difficult to tell how good the 6-foot Colon is because his opposition has been so bad since he turned pro in 2013. What you can tell is that the Puerto Rican Colon has good punching power, and excellent size for the 154lb weight class. What he doesn’t have is hand speed and defensive skills. Colon is easy to hit, and he’s not the fastest guy in the junior middleweight division.

If Colon doesn’t improve much in the coming years, then it’ll be difficult to see him beat the better fighters in the 154lb division like Erislandy Lara, Austin Trout, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Jermell Charlo, Vanes Martirosyan, Anthony Mundine, Ishe Smith, Julian Williams, John Thompson, Liam Smith, Michel Soro, Jermall Charlo, Jack Culcay, Joshua Clottey, Jorge Cota, Sergey Rabchenko, John Jackson, Cornelius Bundrage and Demetrius Andrade. Colon does have an advantage over many of those fighters in that he’s a lot younger than them. This means that by 5 to 7 years from now, guys like Clottey, Trout, Lara, Bundrage, Mundine and Smith will likely be retired or shot fighters. Colon could become one of the top fighters in the division once these guys retire.



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